To Catch a Mermaid

by Suzanne Selfors

  “How do you know what Vikings ate?” Halvor asked, his chest swelling with pride.

  “Because I watch Jeopardy! every night. Except for last night. I missed it last night because . . . I had other things to do.” Mertyle raised her eyebrows. “Jeopardy! experts believe that the Vikings discovered North America, so that would mean that they would have eaten things like turkey, and sweet potatoes, and corn. Lots and lots of corn — hot and buttery. How come you never cook corn? I wish we had some corn, just like the Vikings used to eat.”

  “Oranges grow in North America,” Boom pointed out. He was getting kind of sick of Jeopardy! facts. “Florida is famous for oranges.”

  Halvor smiled. “Yah, that’s for sure. Very good, Boom. And they turned it into marmalade.”

  “Well, North America is also famous for its corn,” Mertyle insisted. “So I think we should start eating corn.”

  “The Vikings did not eat hot and buttery corn. I know because I am a direct descendant of Erik the Red, father of Harold the Bald, father of Hjalmer the Hoarse, father of Val the Vicious, father of Karl the Rude . . .”

  This could go on all morning, and something had just thumped upstairs. “Uh-oh,” Mertyle said, jumping up from her chair. Boom almost choked on his last piece of fish.

  Please, oh please, don’t start shrieking. Boom crossed his fingers.

  Halvor continued. “Father of Erik the Redder, father of Bjorn the Ballerina, but we don’t like to talk about him.”

  Another thump.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” Mertyle announced, running out of the kitchen. Boom nervously looked at the ceiling. If that green thing started making that horrid noise again, what would he tell Halvor? Oh, it’s just the wind. Oh, it’s just a squeaky pipe. Oh, it’s just my science experiment in which I’m trying to create a sound that actually makes heads explode.

  Halvor poured Boom a big mug of coffee. He never seemed to notice that neither Boom nor Mertyle drank coffee. Boom fidgeted, worrying about the baby as Halvor sat down to drink from an even larger mug. Steam swirled from the center of the coffee’s blackness, turning Halvor’s nose red. “Boom, we need to have a little talk, you and I.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I know what’s been bothering you.” How could he know? Halvor removed his helmet and laid it beside the fake artifact. “You’re worried about your father, still shut up in that attic. I won’t lie to you. I thought he’d be better by now, for sure.”

  “Me too,” Boom confessed, relieved that Halvor didn’t know about the baby. But talking about his father wasn’t any easier. It made him feel sad and embarrassed at the same time. “He’s still afraid of the wind. He thinks another twister is coming.”

  “Everyone has fears, Boom, even grown men. But if we let fear control our lives, then we lose ourselves. We lose our way.” Halvor’s face creased with concern. “You’re old enough to know the truth. The money’s almost gone. I’ve got bill collectors calling every day, threatening to turn off the electricity and phone. The bank called yesterday because the mortgage payment is overdue. Your father has got to get back to painting soon or I don’t know what will become of this family.” Halvor’s words rang in Boom’s ears. Boom wanted to ask what became of people who ran out of money. But he was afraid of the answer.

  The kitchen clock ticked and the coffeepot gurgled. Mertyle came back and nudged Boom in the shoulder. “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

  He had momentarily forgotten his mission. “Oh, right.”

  Behind Halvor’s back, Mertyle took the last cod fillet from the counter. It was still raw. She slipped it into her bathrobe pocket. There was another thump from upstairs. “Hurry,” she whispered to Boom as she rushed out of the kitchen, the cat at her heels.

  “I’m finished,” Boom said, showing Halvor his clean plate. “Can I go now?”

  “Yah.” He rested his hands on his hips. “Where are you off to at such an early hour?”

  “I’m going for a walk with Winger,” Boom said, putting on his coat and grabbing his backpack, which still smelled like mud.

  “Yah, okay. Be good boys.” Halvor added more oil to the frying pan and looked around for the missing cod fillet. “Oh, that very bad kitty has stolen from me again.”

  Boom stepped outside to buy food for a merbaby. Not in a million years would he have imagined a Saturday morning mission like that. He checked to make sure the three dollars were still stuffed into his pocket. They were.

  Ropes of smoke wound from neighborhood chimneys. Boom made little breath clouds that floated away on the biting breeze. The dirt circle sparkled with ice crystals that crunched beneath his feet. He jumped over the broken walkway gate, startling a few crows that had been perching on the fence pickets. Normally, Boom would have taken an immediate left, but he stood at the end of his walkway for a moment. Something was not quite right. The Broom and Mump houses were the last on Prosperity Street. Beyond them lay a field of grass and thistle, where Boom and Mertyle used to play hide-and-seek in the pre-twister days. At the edge of the field a narrow trail wound to an ivy-covered forest, then crisscrossed down a rocky slope to the beach where Mr. Broom used to take the children on shell-seeking expeditions.

  But as Boom stood at the end of his walkway and stared at the field, he realized that something strange had happened to it.

  Chapter Ten:

  A Secret Revealed

  The field grasses stood as tall as a grown man. Boom walked to the end of the sidewalk and into the field, looking around in amazement. They were stalks of corn. Six-foot-tall stalks of corn — in March. Boom pulled off one of the ears and peeled back the layers of husk. Inside he found a yellow ear. He took a bite. The corn’s juices sprayed into the back of his mouth. The kernels tasted sweet. How in the world did the corn get there when it had not been there the day before? Corn couldn’t grow in a day. Corn didn’t grow in winter. He took another bite.

  “Boom!” Mertyle cried from the bedroom window in her bossiest voice. “It loved the raw fish. Get some more raw fish. Hurry up.” Sometimes she forgot that she was the little sister and he was the big brother and she had no business bossing him around. He held up the ear of corn, but she had already slammed the window shut. The corn mystery would have to wait. He ran from the field all the way to Winger’s house.

  Winger stood in his own front yard, scooping dog poop. Not the usual thing to do at 7:50 on a Saturday morning. But Mr. Wingingham was a real stickler about getting chores done. Scooping was one of Winger’s many chores and by far the worst because Winger’s dog was the biggest mutt on the planet — a 185-pound drooling menace who squeezed out poop the size of cucumbers.

  Boom leaned on a fence post, catching his breath. “I’ve got something to tell you. Something big!”

  “As big as this?” Winger turned his shovel upside down, dumping its contents into a wheelbarrow.

  “Bigger.”

  “Is it Mertyle?” Winger asked worriedly. “Are her spots worse?”

  “Huh?” Boom unzipped his jacket. Despite the cold air, he had worked up a sweat. “Mertyle’s fine. It’s something else.” He looked around. One of the neighbors was collecting a newspaper. Another was taking out the garbage. “But we can’t talk here. Ask your mom if you can come to the fish dock with me.” He moved upwind of the wheelbarrow.

  “Okay. I gotta go wash my hands.” Winger pushed the wheelbarrow into the backyard.

  Boom waited impatiently on the sidewalk. He kicked a rock against a tree trunk. A light frost outlined the tree and made the grass crunchy. He ate the rest of the ear of corn, then kicked the cob into some shrubs at the far end of the street. Winger’s mutt waddled into the front yard and left another deposit.

  Winger emerged from his house with his mother pulling up the zipper of his goose-down coat, all the way to his chin so he looked like a geek. “Mom,” Winger complained, trying to squirm away.

  “Listen to me, young man. You keep that coat zipped up. It’s cold this morning.”
>
  “Did you finish scooping?” his dad hollered from a distant room.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you make your bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you put those drops in your goldfish tank? If Fergus the Fish dies, I’m not buying you another one.”

  “Yes. I gave him his Ick drops.”

  When Mrs. Wingingham finished zipping, she looked up. “Hello, Boom.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Wingingham,” Boom said, trying to pick a kernel from his teeth with his tongue. Envy clutched his stomach as he watched Mrs. Wingingham plant a kiss on Winger’s forehead. Sometimes she gave Boom a kiss too. Sometimes she asked Boom how he was doing. He ate dinner as often as he could at the Winginghams’ house. The Winginghams ate stuff like roasted chicken and cheesy potatoes, the kind of food Boom’s mother used to make.

  “So sorry to hear about the tournament,” she said.

  “I’m going to demand a rematch on Monday,” Boom confidently assured her.

  “That’s nice.” Winger’s mom smiled and handed each of the boys a sprinkle-covered doughnut. She made her own doughnuts and her own sprinkles. She embroidered Winger’s initials on almost everything he wore. She canned things that she grew herself. She was like a time-warp mom and she smelled nice and powdery.

  “Stay on the sidewalk,” she called after them.

  Winger unzipped his coat as soon as they rounded the corner. “So? What did you want to tell me?”

  Boom pulled Winger close so that they almost touched noses. “I found a merbaby!” he blurted. Really, there was no other way to say it because it just plain sounded crazy.

  “Huh?” Sugar sprinkles clung to Winger’s lips. “A mer-what?”

  “I found a baby mermaid, or a merboy, we’re not sure.” He looked around, but no one was in earshot. “You know, half fish, half baby. A merbaby.”

  Winger smiled. “You expect me to believe that?”

  Of course Boom didn’t expect him to believe it, not at first. Winger was no fool. Boom tried to explain. “The fisherman caught it in his net and since it was all covered in sea grass, which is actually its hair, he didn’t notice what it was. It’s superugly and it has green skin and tons of sharp teeth. It growls and cries and bites, and it smells like mud. It ate Ted the Goldfish.” Boom spoke so fast his tongue felt heavy. Winger looked at him as though he were looking at someone who was demented. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  As a matter of fact, Boom had lied to Winger on many occasions — about the alien spaceship that had supposedly landed in the field, about the shark he had supposedly fought in the Fairweather public swimming pool, and about the vampire that supposedly lurked beneath Winger’s bedroom window. But that was when they were little, before they’d become best friends. “It’s not a lie. It’s on Mertyle’s bed right now.”

  “Maybe you found something,” Winger said with a shrug. “But no way is it a merbaby. Maybe it’s an iguana.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Maybe it’s a parrot fish. They have really strange faces.”

  “It’s a merbaby,” Boom said. “I swear on my life.”

  Winger folded his arms. “Swear on your kicking foot.”

  “Okay. I swear on my kicking foot.” Boom placed his hand on his heart, then touched his right foot with that same hand. That seemed to be enough, because Winger adjusted his glasses and smiled.

  “When can I see it?”

  “I’ll show it to you right after we go to the dock. I’ve got to buy it more food so it won’t start shrieking again.”

  Boom took the lead, charging up the sidewalk with Winger at his heels. They rushed past Mr. Jorgenson’s house. Duct tape now held the front window together. Boom couldn’t pay for the window, so he had offered to work to pay off the debt. He had agreed to work in Mr. Jorgenson’s garage at eleven that morning. That could prove problematic, considering the new addition to the Broom household.

  “Maybe it’s a giant eel.”

  “It’s not a giant eel.”

  The road became steeper as it dropped down into the harbor. Just past the closed fish market, Boom could see the long public dock, but it was empty of boats. There didn’t appear to be any people around either. He started to feel the pangs of disappointment, until he noticed that the bucket still sat at the end of the dock. “That’s the reject seafood bucket,” he explained to Winger. “We can take anything we want from it. It’s all free.”

  They rushed down the dock, but the bucket was empty, except for a large white shell with a pink interior. “Hey, that’s a conch shell,” Winger said.

  Boom picked it up. An icy feeling crept over him, like a ghost breathing on the back of his neck. He recalled Halvor’s story. All that remained was a shred of her dress hanging on the rail and a conch shell, the mark of the merfolk.

  One of them had been there, looking for the baby. It might not be an orphan, as Mertyle thought. Its mom might be out there, in the ocean, worried. But that seemed ridiculous. Those creatures were half fish, and fish didn’t have feelings. A shell wasn’t proof anyway. It could just be a coincidence.

  “We don’t have any conch shells around here,” Winger said, taking it from Boom’s hands. “I wonder where this came from.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe its parents were looking for it after all. But didn’t Halvor’s book say that mermen eat their young? What if the baby wasn’t lost, but had run away from home? What if it had tried to escape from the evil clutches of a treacherous neighbor, or a mean, big-butted principal who had tried to make it go to fish school? Life with Mertyle and Boom might be a whole lot better than life in an ocean teeming with sharks and fishing nets. As he tried to rationalize the situation, Boom realized that as much as Mertyle wanted to keep the baby, he wanted to keep it too. It was, after all, the discovery of the twenty-first century.

  “What are you going to feed it?” Winger asked.

  Boom put the shell into his backpack. “It likes to eat goldfish,” he hinted, hoping Winger would make a small sacrifice to the cause.

  “I’m not feeding it my goldfish,” Winger said hurriedly. “No way. Even though Fergus is sick with Ick, he’s going to get better. As long as I keep giving him those drops.”

  Boom looked out over the bay, wondering if he’d catch a glimpse of a green head with flowing seaweed hair. But only the seagulls disturbed the water, swooping down for their morning meal.

  “Okay. Then we’ll have to go to the pet store.”

  Chapter Eleven:

  Ms. Kibble

  Boom and Winger ran along the sleepy harbor, then turned onto Main Street. From that end of the street it was possible to see all the way to the other end, a mere five-block span. Beyond lay the churning ocean and the endless horizon with its ever-changing array of midnight blue, powderpuff white, and gunmetal gray — like one of Mr. Broom’s palettes. The little shops along Main Street were squeezed together in an odd way, as if the buildings were huddling against the wind.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Winger asked.

  “Do with it?”

  “Are you going to build a cage for it?”

  “I don’t know. Mertyle said she’d take care of it.”

  “Don’t you realize what you could do with it? You could charge people money to see it. Meet the Merbaby. Tourists pay six dollars to go to the Fairweather Aquarium, and the most exciting thing to see there is the stupid hermit crab exhibit. Tourists would totally pay a lot more to see a real merbaby.” Winger started calculating. “There are one thousand two hundred and forty-two people on this island. At six dollars each, that’s seven thousand four hundred and fifty-two dollars. If you charged ten dollars, that would be . . . twelve thousand four hundred and twenty dollars!”

  Twelve thousand dollars? Winger kept calculating as they walked. He added in the population of those who lived on the mainland, and then all the people in China. “Boom! You’ll be the richest kid in the entire world!”

  Boom almost
bit his tongue. Selling tickets had never occurred to him. This baby could be like finding a sunken pirate treasure.

  Boom stopped outside the picture window of the Fairweather shoe store. A pair of fire-red Galactic Kickers sat on display. He pressed his face against the glass, staring at what were, without doubt, the most cherished kicking shoes in the world. The sign read:

  Galactic Kickers.

  Developed with space-age technology, these impact-absorbing wonders are equipped with double arch -support, steel-padded toes, and superior traction.

  The preferred shoe of Kick the Ball Against the Wall champions worldwide. $125.

  Boom wiped a dribble of drool from his lip. “Do you think someone would pay one hundred and twenty-five dollars to see the merbaby?” he asked Winger, who had also pressed his face against the glass.

  “Totally.”

  “Because the problem is that I promised Mertyle not to tell anyone about the baby. She thinks that scientists will take it away and experiment on it.”

  Winger nodded. “She’s probably right. I hadn’t thought of that. They might even stick it in quarantine, like when my dog ate a bat that had rabies.”

  There had to be some way to make this work. “But if we sold just a few tickets to people who promised to keep it a secret, then I could get a pair of Galactic Kickers.” And even help pay the bills around the house and pay the mortgage so they wouldn’t have to move. And buy some decent food.

  “You boys gonna buy something?” Mr. Nord, the shopkeeper, asked.

  “No, thank you,” Boom said, taking a step back.

  “How’s your father doing?” Mr. Nord asked Boom. “I haven’t seen him at the coffee shop since . . .” An uncomfortable silence followed as Mr. Nord noticed the hole in Boom’s sneaker. His gaze traveled across Boom, and an undeniable look of pity settled on his face as he took in the fact that Boom’s clothes were too small, and that his hair hadn’t been washed. “Everything okay at home, Boom?”